Sherman: In that example, you felt the scenes were
underwritten. I’m sure there are times when the scene
is not underwritten. You’ve heard the scene fully in
your head - but either the actors or director have had
a different take on it. I’m sure that, sort of, makes you
pull your hair out - because you feel like they’re miss-
ing the point.
Rebeck: Yes, that’s a challenging situation. That’s why
you have to be really careful around casting. …You
know, if it’s not sounding the way you want it to, you
can’t even hear it. So, you can’t tell if it’s working or
not. …That does happen sometimes.
Sherman: You’ve worked in TV, film, theater, fiction.
Does your process vary based on the format? Tell me
about your process for writing.
Rebeck: The process is always pretty organic. I have
trouble writing outlines in film and television. They’re
in love with these treatments and outlines, and I find
them dreary, and I’ve never been very interested in
writing those things, because I feel like they interfere
with a more organic and intuitive process. So, I try to
stay away from those things. It’s not always the right
thing to do to avoid the whole outlining, but that’s just
the way my instrument works . . . I feel like there’s a
different part of my brain that writes different things.
You know, I call the part of me that- the person WHO
WRITES, “Writer Girl”, and she won’t always do what
I tell her to do. So that’s part of the issue with these
treatments; when she gets really sick of them, she just
won’t do them . . . So, when people ask me, “Can we
have another draft of this?” I say, “You know, I’m
really sorry, but Writer Girl is not interested in doing
that anymore.”. And I feel like her agent. Do you know
what I mean? Like, I’m her agent and sometimes I feel
like it would be great to just ask her to do that. And
to just write that. It would take, like, 10 minutes
really. And . . . sometimes I hear myself talking to my-
self going, “Come on, just write this treatment, it’ll
only take ten minutes.” But she’s really tired of all the
treatments and the way the processes around writing
in a corporate environment waste your time and your
spirit. And so she’s just not interested in that anymore.
Sometimes I feel like Writer Girl actually is the one
who’s really in charge of the plays.
Sherman: Have you explored other art forms?
Rebeck: I play the piano.
Sherman: You do?!
Rebeck: Yes, actually, I play pretty well. Adam [Guettel]
doesn’t even know this. I was classically trained. My
son is trained as a jazz musician - and I can’t do what
he does. That’s mystifying to me. But, you know, I can
play like Rachmaninoff and Chopin and all that stuff.
I can’t play, like, the really hard Beethoven. That stuff
is out of my range. But I play the piano. Sometimes I
knit.
Sherman: Let’s talk about Vermont. How did you
find your way up here?
Rebeck: Well, my husband and I had saved up a little
nugget of dough, because we wanted to buy a place
outside the city. My son and daughter were very
young. …And we had been looking and we knew that
we didn’t want to go out to Long Island. We’re not
beach people. And so we were looking at some other
places, and we had friends who lived in Dorset. And
we visited them several times. And I finally said, “We
like it here. Why don’t we look around here?”
Sherman: And how long have you been up here?
Rebeck: Sixteen years.
Sherman: So tell me about your experience with the
Vermont theater community?
Rebeck: Well, you know, when I first came up here,
I didn’t know Dina Janis, who [now] runs the Dorset
Theatre Festival. And we got to know each other, but
she was not running it then. And I had really hoped to
become involved with the theater - and it didn’t hap-
pen right away. And then Dina stepped in as the
artistic director. We knew each other by that point,
and we had had a lot of conversation about
developing a community of people who were inter-
ested in producing and writing new plays in Dorset.
…Dina and I - and a lot of other people - are very
interested in theater here, and are hoping that we can
continue to draw people up to this remarkable place -
and see it as an arts destination.
Sherman: What was the first show that Dorset
produced for you?
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